Matsu
by telophase
Summary: A supernatural mystery set in Heian Japan starring Abe no Seimei and Minamoto no Hiromasa. From the Onmyoji movies, manga, and novels. Familiarity with Onmyoji not necessary to read and enjoy the story. Written for the Yuletide 2007 challenge.


The snake comes at night, with the storm. It rises through the polished floorboards unseen but still present. She feels its terrible hunger as it comes towards her. She tries to cry out, to alert her husband snoring beside her, but cannot move or make a sound. It approaches, sliding beneath her robe. Scales rasp against her skin as it slithers along her foot, her leg, her hip. The snake coils up on her belly, and settles down to feed.

---

Excerpt from the pillow book of Lady Nagiko:

39. Six unpleasant things

1. Thunderstorms in autumn that tear the leaves from the trees.  
2. A persistent gentleman who does not take hints.  
3. A flute-player who misses a note.  
4. Imperfectly cooked rice.  
5. One who fails to reply when a poem is sent.  
6. A secondary wife of no very great rank who thinks much of herself.

---

Minamoto no Hiromasa was fairly sure he was safe, here in Abe no Seimei's garden, but still he peered nervously out at the thunderstorm from the covered veranda where he and Seimei sat drinking sake. The last time Sugawara no Michizane and his thunder demons rampaged over the capital, lightning struck the Palace, killing four courtiers. Another bolt started a fire that destroyed part of the western quarter of the city.

"The former Emperor restored Lord Michizane and promoted him to the second rank twenty years ago. Why has that not pacified his spirit?" Hiromasa wondered.

Seimei shrugged. "Who can say?"

"You, if anyone, I'd think."

Seimei filled Hiromasa's cup with the last of the sake, then made a gesture. An unfamiliar woman approached with another jug, then retreated behind a screen. Hiromasa supposed she was another of Seimei's shikigami servants. They unnerved him, especially when Seimei turned the paper figures into exact copies of himself. Often Hiromasa was not quite sure if he was talking to Seimei or a shikigami. This was not one of those times-- probably-- as they had been drinking for hours and Seimei rarely played his jokes that long, especially when sake was involved. Hiromasa refilled Seimei's cup.

Seimei nodded in thanks and took a sip. "Sometimes a person's sense of injustice requires restitution in larger measure than the original offense, and this can cause a demon to arise. Michizane's resentment at being framed for treason by the Fujiwara nobles and exiled to the hinterland boiled, rather than simmered, and when he died it transformed him into a powerful demon. He will not be satisfied with just a posthumous promotion."

Lightning illuminated Seimei's disordered garden followed by a particularly loud clap of thunder. Hiromasa jumped. "But what else can be done? The capital could be destroyed if this continues!"

"Have you not heard? A shrine was recently dedicated to him at Kitano. Temman Tenjin, the Thunder God."

Hiromasa's eyes widened. "From a scholar to a demon to a god? That's a powerful resentment."

"Yes. A demon is a sort of spell, arising from the human heart. A god ... Michizane cast a powerful spell indeed."

Hiromasa nodded, and refilled Seimei's cup.

---

She tells her husband about the snake that comes at night. He believes it is just a dream, but he stations guards outside her room, attentive for the least sound. They report hearing and seeing nothing. Her husband says it is only a nightmare, but she cries and screams: it is not a dream but a demon sent to kill her. To pacify her, and because she is so pale, he says he will summon an onmyoji to read the message in her dream.

The onmyoji arrives that afternoon, a short, squat man with a drippy nose. He sits on the floor and twiddles a compass, then chants incomprehensibly for a while. When she is ready to fall asleep from boredom, he announces that the dream is a sending from a jealous rival, and overcharges her husband for a protection spell, assuring them that all will be well. Her husband holds her, pats her hair, and tells her everything is all right, but she knows he is reassuring himself that scandal will not arise.

The snake comes again that night, heedless of wards, guards, and husband.

---

Excerpt from the pillow book of Lady Nagiko:

51. An accusation

Once my husband sent a messenger-- in the middle of the night, even!-- with a most insulting accusation. I sent a single twig from a plum tree and one from a cherry tree in reply. No more was said of the matter.

---

The next morning, she rages and tears at her hair until her husband summons a doctor, who diagnoses an imbalance of yin within her body, building up and manifesting in the form of a snake. Of course the onmyoji's spell didn't work, he says: the spirit snake here is not an external attack but produced from within. The snake embodies her negative feminine energies: it coils around her stomach, appears only at night, is unseen. Her paralysis represents yin inaction and passivity, rather than male yang action.

The doctor burns herbal medicines in her rooms, and sticks needles into her arms and back to unblock the channels that allow qi to flow throughout her body.

Still, the snake returns.

---

Halfway across the Ichijo Modori Bridge, Hiromasa, alone in his ox-cart, said, "Seimei. Tachibana no Yoshinushi has an urgent request." The ox rumbled to a stop outside the decrepit gate of Seimei's estate and Hiromasa's retainers hurried to assist their master from the cart. He left them to wait, striding through the tangles of autumn-colored plant life in Seimei's garden and mounted the steps to the polished wood veranda. A shikigami was just setting a small tray with a sake cup and a small plate of delicacies beside Seimei, who reclined next to a jug of sake, his cup already in hand.

"What could the Minister of Central Affairs want with me that he couldn't ask me himself?" He cocked an eyebrow at Hiromasa.

"To avoid scandal."

"Ah, this gets better and better."

Hiromasa sighed. "It seems that some of the Fujiwara nobles are anxious to avoid another scholar of no notable family gaining undue influence with the Emperor. Lord Yoshinushi is often favored with attention from the Emperor, and his principal wife was a lady in waiting to the former Empress. He fears that they could seize the excuse to uproot him from his position."

Seimei sipped from his cup. "Michizane's influence with that man still in their minds, hm?"

"I wish you wouldn't refer to the Emperor, even former ones, informally. But quite so." Hiromasa took a drink. Seimei's sake was always of the best. "The problem is that Lord Yoshinushi's junior wife, Lady Chikako, is wasting away and claims an unseen snake attacks her at night. Lord Yoshinushi fears for her life."

"Hm," said Seimei. "Interesting, but hardly captivating."

"He is my direct superior; I am worried for him. Please, Seimei?"

Seimei drained his cup. "Well, since you ask."

---

Excerpt from the pillow book of Lady Nagiko:

28. An unanswered letter

I sent the following poem to someone, but received no reply.

When last we met,  
the cherry blossoms  
drifted like snow.  
Now the frost  
limns the autumn leaves.

---

Late that evening at the Tachibana estate, Hiromasa and Lord Yoshinushi, with a screen of state shielding Lady Chikako from the eyes of unrelated men, sat on woven round mats watching Seimei's mysterious preparations. Five small braziers were placed evenly around Lady Chikako's bedclothes and mat, and a small straw doll with a lock of Lady Chikako's hair tied to it lay in the center. Seimei sat nearby, chanting in a low monotone.

Time passed. Hiromasa felt himself nodding off at times, and surreptitiously pinched his thigh through the layers of formal robes to shock himself awake. He would never hear the end of Seimei's teasing if he fell asleep at an important time like this, especially if his hat fell off in front of people. Lord Yoshinushi fidgeted nervously, occasionally leaning back to check behind his wife's screen and reassure himself of her continued safety, while rustling from behind the screen led Hiromasa to deduce that Lady Chikako was starting at every faint sound in the night.

Shortly after the scent from the time-measuring incense board burning in the corner changed, indicating that the second hour of the night had begun, Lady Chikako gasped. Hiromasa saw nothing, but Seimei's chanting intensified. Smoke from the five braziers mingled in the center, and a pale, translucent shape wavered into being. The snake rose slowly from the floor near the bottom of the sleeping-mat, head moving back and forth in the smoky air, tongue flickering in and out of its mouth as it tasted the air for its prey. It silently slithered up the sleeping-mat, towards the doll with Lady Chikako's hair. When it reached the doll, the snake curled around it, encircling it.

Hiromasa sensed Lord Yoshinushi's tension, and grasped Lord Yoshinushi's arm as it reached for the sword placed beside him. "We can do nothing. Leave it to Seimei," Hiromasa whispered in his ear. Lord Yoshinushi settled back onto his heels with ill grace, grudgingly admitting he was powerless in this situation.

Seimei's chant grew louder and more distinct in the night air. He rose gracefully from his kneeling position and stepped back, outside the perimeter described by the braziers. Lifting one hand, two fingers upright, to his mouth, he spoke a short, sharp phrase. The smoke from the braziers formed into the bellflower seal and descended onto the snake, forming a cloud. The translucent form of a woman with round yellow eyes, hair spilling down to pool around her feet, emerged from the cloud, dressed in an iridescent robe of scales. Wisps of smoke bound her arms to her side.

She spoke, faintly. "Hungry," she said. "So ... hungry." Her face was gaunt, and her voice hollow and weak. Hiromasa felt pity stir in his belly, then sternly reminded himself that she was a demon and this was an illusion meant to make them sympathetic to her. Probably.

Lord Yoshinushi leapt to his feet, startling Hiromasa. "Who are you? Who sent you?" he bellowed.

The spirit snake only replied, "Hungry."

"Stay back!" Seimei commanded Lord Yoshinushi. "She cannot speak to tell you. She is bound to this place, and we must free her to learn who bound her. Call for an ax."

Lord Yoshinushi gave the order, and shortly a servant with an ax arrived, kneeling nervously and staring wide-eyed at the spirit snake. Seimei indicated the spot on the floor from where the snake arose. "Tear up the floorboards here."

The servant fell to. When the boards were chopped out, Hiromasa and Lord Yoshinushi crowded around the hole. Under the floor lay the dried body of a snake, pinned beneath a large rock on the rich, dark soil.

Seimei said, "There are many ways of shaping demons. Someone placed this snake here and left it to starve. The spirit became a hungry ghost, always feeding but unable to satisfy its hunger. Had this continued, your lady wife would have died."

There was a gasp from behind the screen and Lord Yoshinushi called for his lady's women, who escorted her from the room. Turning to Seimei, his face pale in the flickering, smoky light of the braziers, he demanded, "Who did this?"

Seimei nodded at Hiromasa, who reached into the hole in the floor and removed the rock and the snake's body. It felt light and fragile, as if it might crumble at his touch. Seimei fixed his gaze on the body and started chanting, the first two fingers of his right hand held to his lips. He ran his fingers lightly over the body of the snake and flicked them up, towards the bound spirit. The spirit dissolved back into a cloud of smoke, then re-formed into a snake, this time without the binding. It rose into the air and hovered a moment, head weaving back and forth, tongue flickering, tasting the air. It found the direction it was looking for and shot off, vanishing through the screens that formed the walls of the room. The body in Hiromasa's hands fell into dust.

"She will return to the one who made her and eat her fill," Seimei explained.

Lord Yoshinushi bit his lip, then called a servant over and bade him go to the apartments of his principal wife, Lady Nagiko, and inquire after her. Hiromasa shot a glance at Seimei, who looked amused. Lord Yoshinushi, not meeting anyone's eyes, asked, "Is this matter over?"

Seimei shrugged. "Once the snake has found her maker, it will be." He extinguished the braziers with a word, as another servant began to gather up the ritual paraphernalia.

The messenger returned. He handed Lord Yoshinushi two twigs, one from a plum tree and one from a cherry. The tension drained out of Lord Yoshinushi, and he smiled down at the twigs. "I ... have been distracted of late. I should remedy that soon," he murmured.

Hiromasa, lost, glanced at Seimei, who shrugged elaborately. "It is finished," he said. "Let us take our leave."

---

Excerpt from the pillow book of Lady Nagiko:

30. Once at court I overheard another lady in waiting

Once at court I overheard another lady in waiting reciting a story of Ariwara no Narihira, wherein one evening he returned to a lady who no longer interested him, to spare her feelings and soften the blow of his disregard. (Lord Narihira was a proper gentleman, unlike men these days!) I was shocked at her lack of tact, as it was common knowledge that the Emperor had not been to the Empress' apartments for some time, preferring to visit his newest wife.

---

Hiromasa returned to Seimei's house the next afternoon, full of Court gossip about the sudden death of Fujiwara no Okikaze, the Minor Controller of the Left. "His servants discovered him without a mark on him. The fourth junior assistant to the Minister of the Left says it was probably the work of a female fox spirit that drained his qi, but the third senior assistant of the Minister of the Center thinks it was the fault of Lord Michizane."

Seimei looked up from the scroll he was studying. "Oho, do they? And you?"

Hiromasa furrowed his brow, lost in thought. Eventually, he cleared his throat and spoke. "It seems to me that if last night's situation had continued unchecked, the Fujiwara clan could have seized on the apparent scandal of Lord Yoshinushi's principal wife causing the death of her sister wife. Then, they would no longer be threatened by a scholar with the favor of the Emperor, such as Lord Michizane was. Did you realize that last night?"

"The thought occurred to me."

"Ah." Hiromasa nodded, then a thought struck him. "Speaking of last night, I don't understand the significance of the cherry and plum twigs that Lady Nagiko sent as a reply."

Seimei put down the scroll and gestured for a shikigami servant to bring them sake. "The important part of that message is not what was there, but what was left out. When Michizane was exiled to Dazaifu, his favorite cherry tree withered and his favorite plum tree uprooted itself and flew to him."

Hiromasa shook his head in puzzlement. "That would be the cherry and plum twigs, but what was left out?"

Seimei tut-tutted. "You don't read enough poetry for a courtier, Hiromasa. It is said that after the plum arrived, Michizane sent a poem to his favorite pine, remonstrating it for its disloyalty, whereupon it uprooted itself and flew to him."

Understanding dawned on Hiromasa's face. "Ah, I see."

Seimei poured sake for Hiromasa and himself, and they sat, drinking and talking, through the afternoon and evening, long into the night.

---

The snake is gone. Her husband installs her in new apartments on the estate and stays with her for the next few nights to comfort her after her fright, but there comes an evening when he goes elsewhere. On following nights, sometimes he returns to her and sometimes he does not, but the early days of their marriage, when he was hers and hers alone, have passed and do not return.

---

Excerpt from the pillow book of Lady Nagiko:

68. The snows of winter

The snows of winter  
have laid the  
mountain's peak bare.  
But the pines on the slope  
are yet still green.

* * *

**A/N:**

Many thanks to keelieinblack for the beta!

Written for: Edo no Hana in the Yuletide 2007 Challenge at now for the massive amount of author's notes, because there was just so much cool stuff about the Heian era that I put in (and even more that I left out!). I tried to keep the story as historically correct as possible, although Heian rank organization and politics are huge tangled messes, so hopefully nothing is obviously wrong.

Sugawara no Michizane's exile, posthumous career as disaster-bringer, and subsequent deification as Tenjin, the god of scholarship, are documented. The poem referred to in the story remonstrating the pine was most likely written after Michizane's death, as that story showed up first in a Noh play a few centuries later. Also, one of the conspirators that brought about Michizane's downfall was a former student of his who faked a knowledge of onmyodo (practitioners of which are referred to as onmyoji) and made false predictions pointing to Michizane as a traitor. I thought the onmyoji Seimei might have some snippy things to say about that, but couldn't find a good place to put them in.

The book _Sugawara no Michizane and the Early Heian Court _by Robert Borgen is an excellent resource on his life and the era.

The time-measuring incense board is slightly out of place: as far as I know at this time in Japan they were only used in Buddhist monasteries, but I was overwhelmed by the Cool Factor and stuck it in anyway. You can read more about incense measuring time in the paper "The Scent of Time: A Study of the Use of Fire and Incense for Time Measurement in Oriental Countries" by Silvio A. Bedini, published in 1963 as part of the _Transactions of the American Philosophical Society_; v.53, part 5 (available through JSTOR if you have access).

The poetry is in the pre-eminent form of the Heian era, the five-line waka, although lines are an English-language equivalent for a unit or phrase in the Japanese language. There are several forms, with different syllable (English) or unit (Japanese) counts, but I chose to ignore that and pretend they were translations that focused on the imagery more than the structure (and plan to claim any mistakes I made here and elsewhere as translator's errors).

"Nagiko" is likely the personal name of Sei Shonagon, the author of _The Pillow Book_, but was chosen in homage to her, rather than meant to be her.

"Matsu--," the title, is a pun in both Japanese and English. "Matsu" means both "pine tree" and "to wait," and much Japanese poetry throughout the ages has turned on that double meaning. "Pine" in English means, naturally, "pine tree" as well as "to waste away/to long for," and seemed to fit one of the themes of the story.

The bellflower symbol referred to in the story refers to the five-pointed star that the stories attribute to Abe no Seimei's creation.

Heian women of the upper class lived fairly restricted lives, appearing only behind screens and in closed ox-carts when traveling. Ideally, the only two men ever to see a woman of the time would be her father and her husband. In practice, many women took lovers, but their lovers only visited them at night, leaving before the dawn to prevent scandal (staying during the day was tantamount to marriage). Much wistful poetry refers to the dawn in sad terms. Women who served at court enjoyed a little more freedom to be in the presence of men at court with their faces uncovered, but once they left court, they were subject to the same restrictions as other women. This is one of the many reasons that poetry and calligraphy was prized so highly at the time - the only way you had of judging another person was by the elegance and accomplishment revealed in their handwriting, composition, and knowledge of the classics as referred to in poetry and prose.

I found the snake story in a collection of Japanese fairy tales. In that case, however, the snake was trapped beneath a house accidentally, but I combined that with the idea of creating an angry, vengeful dog spirit by deliberately starving a dog to come up with the idea of deliberately creating a snake spirit for a particular purpose.


End file.
